My beloved friends, you are in the presence of Christ, He is here, always with you; you have God’s blessings. Reach out so that you can be helped where you need it most, when you are in disturbance or disharmony of any nature.

Many of you find yourselves in turmoil because you feel that I now “bring in” Jesus Christ. This is an error in your perception; I have always talked about His existence, from the very beginning of my task with you. There was a period in which we had to emphasize your inner processes; you had to learn the subtleties of the unconscious processes in order to explore yourselves in depth. Only through this exploration can a belief in God and a commitment to all His aspects become meaningful. Only through self-exploration can you find out God’s truth. Otherwise you are superimposing a belief, covering up whatever unconscious material there may exist in you that you need to deal with.

I am a spirit of truth, my friends, and I could never, I would not, lead you astray. If I speak of Jesus Christ’s reality, which is an aspect of God’s reality, it is so only because you no longer need to erect barriers of any sort. Barriers can take many forms. We have worked with barriers of a subtle nature, for many years. All I am asking you now is to open yourselves up to new considerations and possibilities; I am not asking you to accept my words blindly. If my words are not truth, you should not accept them. But if they are, you must not barricade yourselves against them. For it is necessary to know, to grasp, to experience what-ever truth exists so that you can attain your full potential and be who you ultimately are.

The topic of this lecture is the meaning of tradition. Let us first examine what tradition means in its best sense, and then what it means when it is distorted. Many human beings have distinct images about tradition. These images trigger off conditioned reflex reactions as soon as this term is mentioned or when human conditions reflect adherence to tradition either in its real or in its distorted sense.

Tradition in its real sense means the continuation of faith in eternal truths and values. Once a cosmic reality has been discovered and has been expressed in human life, those who experience the inevitable beauty, goodness and rightness of it, logically attempt to continue its expression. Please keep in mind that all true values, values of whatever nature, must have been at one point in time a breakthrough from the world of spirit.

To keep these values alive, it is necessary to feel and inwardly experience the particular truth in question. Ritual celebrations can do this, but they are not necessarily a guarantee for the continuous aliveness of a specific truth. A ritual can be an empty gesture. True tradition is therefore a continuous re-experiencing of the original breakthrough from inner worlds or other realities, a re-experiencing today of a dynamic aliveness, no matter how long ago the tradition may have been formed. Tradition, in its best sense, means adherence to eternal values or to certain aspects of these values, depending on which particular tradition we have in mind.

Tradition in its distorted sense means a dead weight, a meaningless carryover. This does not necessarily mean that a specific tradition did not contain eternal values and truths at the time it came forth. But at the present time its true meaning may be disregarded or forgotten, the rituals involved may be mechanically repeated and thus the tradition has been deadened; its reality has become flattened or even totally obliterated.

Tradition in its distorted sense might involve a meaningful truth, an experience, a custom that was valid at a certain time in history, under certain conditions and in specific circumstances. Continuing these same acts or attitudes or customs under completely different circumstances, under conditions where the meaning of this tradition has been lost is therefore a process of death, rather than of life. Carrying over a tradition in an unthinking attitude, adhering to a blind habit that does not make sense, that fails to elucidate through acts or attitudes the divine truth contained in the tradition in question, signifies death. Aliveness always means a dynamic thinking process, an awareness — not blind repetition.

So you see, my friends, tradition can be an intensely meaningful reality, or it can be a meaningless, dead repetition of the past that no longer has any application in the now.

Human responses to tradition are deeply embedded in the personality. All aspects of society are influenced by each individual’s attitude to tradition; whether a person is aware of a tradition’s real meaning as applicable today or whether he or she is in distortion and is merely repeating an act out of habit, makes a great deal of difference. Politics and religion, to name but a few aspects of life, are very clearly influenced by and also reflect a specific society’s attitude to tradition.

There are those who put so much value on tradition that all common sense goes overboard when a tradition is at stake. They believe that only what conforms to tradition, to the past, is of any value. They rigidly reject any change, which is of course a most foolish attitude, because the very tradition they adhere to now came into being at one time through change. Without continuous change, alive unchanging verities cannot be lived. True tradition must therefore always be coupled with change. The healthy balance of the soul of the earth can be attained and maintained when tradition and change interphase in a harmonious dance.

Those who follow tradition blindly and meaninglessly create extreme orthodoxies in religion and politics — and of course within the human soul. Such orthodoxy imposes on society a heaviness and a resistance to change. It springs from the misunderstood message of the soul to preserve the truths, the beauty, and the values that were given in the past. But it is forgotten that these truths came as a result of the soul’s struggle to find divine meaning and because of the personality’s willingness to overcome the fear of change.

There are also those who rebel against all tradition; they rebel against its meaningless, dead manifestation, just as much as against its real, alive manifestation. This blind attitude is a result of the belief that only new findings can be of value, that all that has existed in the past must be inferior or invalid. It overlooks the fact that eternal values have always existed and will always exist and can always break through to consciousness, provided certain prerequisites are being fulfilled.

The new-age person will neither blindly worship tradition, nor blindly rebel against it. He or she will take every specific tradition, as it becomes an issue in his life, and will examine it with intelligence and self-honesty. Do you have a personal stake in maintaining this or that tradition? Does living this tradition make sense in your life now? What does it mean to you, and why are you adhering to it or rejecting it? When you examine life’s issues in that way, you will find the most constructive way in which you can continue your traditions and make them new most meaningfully. If you have the right attitude, you will never rebel when an old tradition is discontinued, or when it is replaced by new customs, rituals and celebrations. Ask yourself if the old tradition has been superseded by truths and values that are more meaningful for you today or not. With this attitude you will live in a dynamic now; you will be able to value what deserves to be valued from the past, but you will also be able to let go of the past and thus create a new future, rather than a dead repetition of the past.

On this earth sphere you talk about old and new. Often these words carry positive and negative connotations. It can be either way. Some people think of the old as all good, all benign, unthreatening and full of values, while anything new they regard as threatening, disrupting, wrong, bad. These people are, of course, the traditionalists. There are also those who see anything old as outdated, undesirable and bad, while anything new is totally desirable and good. I hardly need to point out that here again you are face to face with an apparent duality which you can transcend when you see the positive and negative possibilities in both extremes.

On a level of deeper spiritual reality, neither of these terms makes any sense. There is neither old nor new, and there is both. Everything already exists and always has existed, and always will exist. What is new on earth is that a certain aspect of ultimate reality “vibrates through” into the world of matter. You must remember that the level of matter is a condensation of finer vibratory forms. These forms exist already in what you may call spirit. All life pulsates, expands and contracts. Matter comes into existence by spiritual forms pulsating “outwardly.” When the contraction occurs, life withdraws and matter disintegrates. Although I have spoken about this before, you often forget these ideas and do not think of your life in these terms. The more you can remind yourself of this truth and the more you feel it in your life and in your ideas, the closer you will come to being in truth.

The forms that exist in the world of finer vibrations do not only manifest as objects, although objects certainly bear witness to the existence of these forms. There is no object on earth that does not have its origin in spirit, where it is perhaps “used” in a different way, because of the different conditions that exist in the world of spirit. Its essence is “pulsated through” into matter, and there it recreates its original form in a modified way, in a symbolic way, in an adjusted way that fits the circumstances on this level of reality.

Aside from objects we are of course dealing with concepts, abstract ideas, values, truths, laws, and so on. It is often hard for a human being to imagine that an idea existed in finer vibratory form before it reached his or her consciousness. The many abstract concepts and laws I have discussed with you throughout the years of our work are realities in our sphere of life. Like objects, concepts often differ in application and meaning in the two spheres, because on your plane you only perceive very simplified and cruder manifestations of these ideas, concepts and laws.

To return to the concept of tradition: Tradition in our world describes merely an aspect of a certain specific reality. It refers to the reality of valuing eternal truth in its manifold manifestations, or perhaps in a certain specific manifestation. As this attitude vibrates through into your dimension of reality, it becomes diminished, modified and separated from its entire meaning. This is inevitable, since your reality is limited. In the fourth sphere a unity is split into a duality, whereby much of its original meaning is lost or distorted. It is always possible for you to recapture the original meaning and thus open up to a further influx of various levels which together will depict a more complete reality. Such openings occur through specific mental attitudes and activities, and are the result of the struggle to see beyond the limited confines of your world.

The other aspect — counter-tradition — also exists in our world, in our dimension of reality that is always ready to break into your reality and thus to expand your reality. It exists as the constant movement toward renewing and giving new life to the eternal truths and laws. So the old and the new exist in the timeless reality of eternal now — not as old and new timewise, but as concepts or attitudes with a specific meaning and expression behind them.

Let us consider the movement of your path, this particular path I first brought to you a few years ago. When you look back, you will see a spiral movement, which is the movement of the great life currents. You see certain repetitions in the spirals, phases re-encountered on deeper levels with new understanding. These aspects appeared as new when you first gained them in the previous curve. Thus the old truth, learned in the previous curve, makes new sense because of the additional material you have learned on the way. What was once an entirely new truth, a revelation, later becomes renewed in repetition — an old truth under new light. But the renewal could take place only because other truths — new and old — have been discovered along the way. They are new in the sense that they have been unknown by the individual; they are old in the sense that they existed before they were known to the individual.

The same spiral movement exists in the personal development and growth process of each individual. You cannot fail to see it if you observe it clearly, with full consciousness. The material of the lectures, which is the groundwork of the rhythm you follow, lays the plan for this movement that is very organically adapted to a much greater reality than what you can perceive. Every expansion you have ever experienced on this path — and there were quite a few — always meant the incorporation of hitherto unknown — new to you — aspects of inner reality and therefore a new approach to your work. The organic movement brought about seemingly miraculous changes of personality in the best sense; it brought new fulfillment and the awakening of previously dormant potentials. A new abundance made itself more and more noticeable, on all levels, in many individuals and in your path as a whole, as an entity.

Yet there was also great resistance to expansion of thinking, to each innovation, each new approach, method, or spiritual concept I gave you. Each new approach or expansion of seeing — witnessing the world in a new light — has always created a sense of threat. You wish to hold on to the old familiar approach which is known to you, to keep the confines of thinking and perceiving untouched, unexpanded. Here you become a traditionalist. In the distortion of the personality all principles exist in distortion, just as in the purified part of the personality all principles exist in truth, faithful to their real meaning.

Each new phase is greeted with rebellion against the authority that presents you with what seems to break the tradition you have become accustomed to. Tradition is created wherever human life takes form. It exists on the largest social scale and on the smallest, most temporary scale. The path as you have known it, say until two years ago, had established a certain tradition with which you had begun to feel somewhat comfortable. This tradition had to be broken — renewed — by adding new truths to it — new to you, but not new per se, for these truths have always existed. Only after your accepting and trusting the new truths did they become incorporated into the body of the total work, the path. So a temporary “new” tradition came into being until the next breath of the great pulsating movement the organism was ready for vibrated into matter. When you trust the new/old truth and do not obstruct it, you incorporate it in your life and thus your entire consciousness is widened and expanded; wisdom, freedom and abundance is added on to you.

Growth is not possible otherwise. It can only exist when this movement is intact and as unobstructed as possible. Growth must combine the old and the new. It must retain tradition and renew and enliven it.

These are eternal verities and principles that hold true for everything, for every conceivable aspect of life. I spoke about this quite generally and abstractly, but would now like to address myself more specifically to the new phase of expansion you are going through and the attitudes in you that make this expansion unnecessarily painful. In your fear you confuse issues; your thinking becomes muddled and disconnected in your very attempt to rationalize your rebellion against something new, when you endeavor to maintain the comfortable confines of this path as you have known it till now. But it would not be this path if it could remain static. The path is a movement, a journey, that comes to a halt when the movement is obstructed. Stagnation was the fate of many spiritual, religious, psychological truths that have been filtering through into your world of matter. Stagnation has been the fate of so much that once had deep value. People stopped the movement due to their fear of antagonizing those who obstruct further movement, change and expansion. They lacked the vitality to withstand opposition to further expansion and movement. This is why so many seemingly new organizations, orientations, or schools of thought, arise constantly. The old is either being calcified by the distorted concept of tradition, or totally disrupted by the distortion of seeking change, seeking the new.

So far we have succeeded in keeping this path on course in this respect, combining tradition and change in their best sense, thus keeping the spirit pure. Opposition to both these aspects — tradition and change — has existed, exists now and will exist, of course. But the nucleus of this path has kept a steady balance. We pray to the Lord for His grace that this will continue.

Let us make a brief review, from this point of view, about the various phases of this path until now. I will give a general outline to help you to evaluate where you are at this juncture. Before doing so, let us restate what this path is, so as to avoid any possible confusion that may have arisen through the turmoil of your mind. This entire turmoil is an artificial creation. Be that as it may, you again need clarification.

The aim of this path is to effect personal development to the utmost of the individual’s potential, on all levels. For this growth to take place, a variety of approaches are necessary. The mind needs to be totally emptied in the sense of a recent answer I gave to a question. All preconceived notions need to be challenged and examined — this means openness to change. In this open state, some old opinions, beliefs and ideas will be reinstated because their truth will become discernible on a deeply felt level; this means preserving tradition. Then the old truths will live in a new way in the consciousness of the person; this means enlivened, renewed tradition. Other old beliefs will be discarded because they no longer make sense — and this again means change.

On the emotional level a similar process occurs, but it needs to be approached in a different way. In order to cleanse emotions and make them life-affirming, rather than life-destroying, you must have clear and truthful concepts. Emotions cannot live in a void, without any mental processes because the human being is a thinking and discriminating creature. Humans are not meant to live by blind emotions. To develop their emotional nature, they need to go through the process of accepting their feelings, no matter how destructive they may be. People must learn to find a way to express them without damage to themselves or others. Once people learn to accept even their destructive feelings they can begin to change them. This requires their full intelligence and the maturity of their mental processes so that a proper evaluation of the feelings can take place. It requires their physical nature to become healthy and enlivened by creative energy. Last but not least, such change requires spiritual influx and help, without which neither the strength nor the wisdom to direct this ever-changing process can exist.

Throughout the years I have constantly focused on showing you these various levels through many teachings and on helping you through guidance, inspiration and advice, to alternate from level to level. At one time you would have to concentrate more on the emotional level, learning to accept and deal with feelings whose force you inordinately feared and denied. At other times you had to concentrate on your mental processes and images, in order to recreate more realistic thoughts. At yet other times you concentrated more on your body, to make it a fitting receptacle for truth, love, wisdom and service. At times you concentrated more on spiritual understanding, on a new outlook of creation as a whole, and on learning meaningful prayer and meditation.

Without this constant interfacing, without the inclusion of all these levels, development would be lopsided and would therefore finally come to a halt.

The aim of this path is a development of consciousness that is almost unprecedented. But in your world only a relatively small group of individuals is indeed ready for this evolution of their personal being, thus contributing to the evolution of your entire sphere of consciousness. A renewal of this kind brings about an untold expansion of personal happiness and fulfillment. Yet personal happiness and fulfillment must not be the primary aim. The primary aim must become, at one point along the way, service to the greater cause. When this happens, the willingness to sacrifice soon turns out to be the most fulfilling act of life. Sacrifice appears less and less a sacrifice, until it becomes evident that God’s will coincides with your self-interest in the best and most far-reaching way. The Godman or Godwoman — the New Person — evolves out of this work that includes the totality of the individual: the physical, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual level of being, until they are all integrated into one whole and no longer separated. Thus the thinking is the feeling, is the bodily sensation, is the prayer. This wholeness represents the utmost of liberation, power in the best sense, individuation, and, what may appear as a contradiction, total surrender to God’s will, which is the individual’s will.

So, this path is many things. It is a psychology, for you obviously work on your psychological attitudes, your feelings, your unconscious processes. It is a philosophy, for you adopt new ways of seeing the world. It is a physical orientation, for you work with your body. It is a sociology, for you learn new modalities to function in your social environment. It is a new political system, for you learn to combine both tradition and change in a very new way. It is religion, for you learn about Creation, your part in it and your new relationship to God. It is all and it is none of these things. It is the creation of a new planetary being, with new values and with old truths renewed. This new person will gradually overtake and influence, step by step, those who want to obstruct this development.

When you look back on the material I brought and taught you, you will easily see that I have emphasized this alternation systematically. I have concentrated on different levels and different aspects at different times, only to come back after a certain period of absorption to the previous levels. I have started by giving you an overview of spiritual reality in the most simplified way. I have then gone on to convey new concepts, most of the time aimed to bring the split of duality into a new unity — just as I do now with tradition and change. I have then entered into a new phase of exploring inner, unconscious levels and attitudes. I have taught you how to experience pain, helplessness, rage. I have helped you to see and accept your mask and your lower self. I have opened up to you the vista to your higher self. I have re-entered into the spiritual realms with your thoughts and feelings.

You have worked hard along the way. Phase by phase, spiral movement after spiral movement, we have followed this journey. Each phase seemed new and was always opposed by reasonings that were always rationalizations. Each phase was of course also old, because no eternal truths are totally new. They may be new here in their application and combination. When your mental processes were challenged, there were always those who did not want to tamper with them and resisted. When it came to working with your emotional processes, there were always those who resisted “psychological therapy.” When spiritual truths were discussed, there were always those who did not want “religion.” Each of these arguments came from the fear of expanding into who you are meant to be, who you potentially are on the unmanifest level of reality.

At the present time, the mention of Jesus Christ elicits the same resistance that has always existed when an extended approach, an old/new truth was introduced anew. When unconscious, irrational feelings were lifted to the surface, many of you were terrified; some friends left the path. The same thing happened when responsibility for the lower self became an essential aspect of the pathwork. When prayer and meditation were explained in detail and its dynamics taught so that you could use this essential tool, again many turned away with resistance and rebellion — always rationalized, of course. When the body was included into the total work, the same reactions came up. When different spiritual realities were emphasized — Jesus Christ is one of them — this, too, was used as an opportunity to avoid the total revision of personality aspects, the healing of the soul. Yet none of these aspects was a surprise, since all of them were foreshadowed and discussed at the very beginning of my manifestation through this instrumentality. I also explained that concentration on these various levels of being will alternate and follow a certain rhythm.

As I mentioned before, you must understand that every one of these truths exists in the spirit reality and is thus neither old nor new, and yet is both. It is old, because it has always existed. It is new, because it now breaks through into your level of reality. These aspects of reality may not have the same name, for in the world of spirit names do not exist in the same way as in your dimension of reality. But their essence exists and what you experience and perceive here about any and all of these approaches and realities are merely segments. For it is hardly possible to experience a total reality on your level of consciousness. This then leads to naming the thing; to creating often false associations to the thing; and to partial and therefore distorted vision of the thing.

When psychology made its appearance on earth, it was for you entirely new. Yet in the world of spirit, these levels of consciousness are open, visible, observable and accessible. They cannot possibly create the controversy that the appearance of psychological realities created on your earth sphere for a long time. Psychology then often came to mean an opposition to spirituality, a contradiction which, of course, is utterly false. So you still find spiritual leaders, ministers and priests who are against psychological depth work.

By the same token Jesus Christ has always existed. He is, always was, and always will be the Great Light that directly emanated from God, the manifestation that God gave form to; the most divine embodiment in the universe. For many of you who strongly react in the most negative way when you hear the name Jesus Christ, this fact in itself would not, could not, carry any negative connotations. The ancients, long before the birth of Jesus Christ, always knew of this great light and also knew that it will one day manifest as human form. Why is this fact being resisted so? At one time the resistance was entirely political and power-oriented, just as new and honest political approaches are resisted now. Those in power would be disadvantaged by them and thus would oppose them.

Your personal irrational reactions to the truth of Him who was foretold by your very forefathers but then denied, is solely based on false tradition, which is nothing but fear of change. Thus your reactions are emotional and irrational. They do not allow a calm, open, fresh approach that can question the issue objectively and make room for the possibility that your forefathers have erred at a certain point of their evolution. They have halted their process and interrupted the line of their inner movement — individually and as a people. This happens constantly in human development, in many other areas, with many different individuals and peoples.

Why is this possibility so stubbornly rejected, so as to not even permit consideration of it? You do not permit your hearts to be open to a truth that you felt hitherto disinclined to accept. But truth can fill you only when you remove the tight so-called “knowledge” and make room for a different knowledge. If this open attitude exists and if your originally believed-in truth is indeed truth, you will come back to it anew. But if it turns out to be faulty, you will remove an obstruction that can only limit and bind you. In either case, your liberation and your selfhood, the discovery of inner truth that is both personal and universal, can only lie in this openness and willingness to let go and consider different possibilities. Your fear that you will thus lose your autonomy is totally false and irrational. Real autonomy must rest on what is cosmic and universal truth, not on a personal and possibly false opinion about universal truth.

The personal longing that brought you to this path, regardless of what you had consciously in mind, can only be fulfilled when you bring your personality into alignment with spiritual truth, whatever that may be at any given time of your evolutionary journey. Some of you violently struggle against this movement, but ignorantly so. The deep reason for this struggle is, as I said, fear. The tragedy is that while this fear is entirely needless and unfounded, there is everything to fear from obstructing and not even considering a larger truth you have not allowed into your heart as yet.

With this, beloved friends, I deeply bless you and pray with the angels and the spirit helpers on my side that all of you may find the courage and wisdom, the openness and freshness to give new considerations to old truths and thus flow with the beautiful rhythm of your inner journey, so that it may be in harmony with the larger and vaster cycles that permeate the universe. You thereby create tradition in the best sense and change in the best sense. You retain the values of the old and constantly eliminate values no longer applicable. This follows the same laws of digestion and elimination that apply to the body. The system could not be kept cleansed and working well if this process were not allowed. The healthy body lives positive tradition and positive change in its marvelous apparatus of digestion, elimination and assimilation.

A great blessing and energy influx sweeps through your community, through the earth, through all hearts that are open and receptive and willing. God’s love envelops you all.

This website is not created by, affiliated with, or endorsed by the
Pathwork Foundation, Gerard van de Lustgraaf is solely responsible for
this website and its content. The Pathwork Lectures are used and displayed on this website with support from the Pathwork Foundation. Pathwork ® is a registered service mark of
the International Pathwork Foundation.